These days in Education, and honestly in the USA in general, there's a lot of talk. We talk about everything...but what do our actions show?
We talk about how we want our students to "advocate for themselves" and we talk about how parents do everything for students and the students don't know how to do anything, but when students go to their counselors to change schedules because they have decided they don't want to take a class, or can't handle that work, or it just simply isn't what they want, they get told to "deal" or just plain "sorry" until their parents call or email and suddenly the class changes. Students can literally spend 3 weeks "advocating for them self" only to have a parent phone call or email do in 5 minutes what they have been using their time trying to do and stressing out about in their hard-earned, over-scheduled time.
We talk about how we want to raise kids to make their own decisions, but when they make a decision about what class to take or what extracurricular activity to do, we question it at every turn. "Are you sure you want to take French 4? You should take AP or honestly just drop language all together and take AP Bio." Why do we do this? There is a difference between, "Hey look, you're good enough to take AP French. Is there a reason you're taking French 4?" and "Look, if you aren't going to take AP, then it isn't worth it and you should take this science course that you never even mentioned wanting to take." The difference is listening to the student. Students are smarter than we give them any credit for. Personally, I hear a lot of, "I want to take Latin 4 because I really love Latin and want to continue it, but I don't feel like I can really commit to AP. I mean, I'm already taking 6 APs!" Aside from the fact that feeling like they have to take 6 AP classes is probably bad for students' mental health, why are we asking them to drop something they love and draw pleasure from to take something they don't?
I have watched several students literally cry in my classroom because their parents are questioning their college choices. While I understand that the parents are paying for it, and all issues of financial ability aside, this is the place a person is going to spend 4 years of their life and learn and get ready to jump into the world. There is all kinds of research that says a student is not going to learn at a place they aren't comfortable, so why are we trying to make them go somewhere they aren't comfortable?
Ignoring students' wishes and their attempts to self-advocate is creating passive, uninterested young people. And then society as a whole has the nerve to blame the students, rather than examine what we are really teaching them with our actions. We are teaching them to settle. We are teaching them that well enough is fine, no matter how much we say that they have to be perfect. We are teaching them that their happiness does not matter.
And yet, the expectations placed on students are unreal. As adults, we have what we call our 'bad days.' Students are not allowed to have 'bad days.' They are reminded all the time how one 3.5 rather than 4.0 will completely erase their chance of ever going to college. And it has carried over and up. I watch as my generation (I'm 34) and the generations below us have "learned" that we are not allowed to make mistakes. We feel so much guilt when we mess up anything. Perfect is the name of the game, folks. We have to literally work ourselves to death or we will never amount to anything.
THIS. IS. NOT. HEALTHY. It isn't healthy for us, for our students, for our families, for our relationships, both with our peers and our own families.
No one will ever give you the tools you need to overthrow them. We need to realize this. It is hard to stand up for yourself, especially when you are trained not to. But it's time to take it back, to realize that we matter, that our students matter. Overthrowing this toxic culture certainly is not going to happen overnight, but we need to START. Everything begins somewhere.
